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Ben Halpern
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My first day as a software developer

Comment on Tell me something funny about your first DEV job
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Ben Halpern Feb 7 '20

I was broke and looked pretty disheveled when I got my first dev job and when I showed up on my first day somebody called security on me while I was waiting in the lobby 😐

Everybody has to start somewhere!

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panditapan profile image
Pandita

I was nervous and my "tocayo" (we have the same name!) was the one onboarding me. He showed me over 15 different programs he used to code, he sorta explained git to me (I had never heard of it at the time), then sublime, then PHP, Laravel and so on. Later that morning I was thrown in a project with no docs, no comments, no nothing! I was so ashamed of asking questions but my lead was really nice about it. Then in the afternoon, I was told about another project I would be in at the same time I was working on the other one.

It was so. much. for. me.

But I had lots of fun at that job. I really miss it sometimes.

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manuelojeda profile image
Manuel Ojeda

Suerte que entraste directo a Laravel, que genial 🤟

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enmel profile image
Enmanuel Marval

Solo vine a decir que: Laravel es lo máximo

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

About 6 months into my career 🐣 I got a project working for the local government council, I designed thier intranet to look like the Xbox 360 dashboard sort of (let's employ a youth, with no experience to design our internal tooling), they still use it and too this day! I haven't had complaints. It even had useless features like customizable wallpapers. I cringe 🤦‍♂️

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sandeepbalachandran profile image
Sandeep Balachandran

After college I realised i got no 'food' remains from parents. So I got into a startup and when I showed up on my first day there was no one even security so i waited in the lobby until they arrived. Soon I realised it was the wrong building

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achimoraites profile image
Achilles Moraites

On my first Dev job I was told that I will be working for free as long as i did not produce enough revenue for the company and I should be thankful to be trained for 'free'.

After a month of working hard both in the office and at home the company made me a proposal to hire me as a NodeJS Developer.

The beginning has hard and even I thought I had the basics covered the challenges just blew my mind!

Don't let the fear of failure to stop you from doing what you love, if you don't try you fail for sure!

If you try you can succeed!!!

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maxart2501 profile image
Massimo Artizzu • Edited

Shame that made you swallow that bs about being "productive for the company"!

Companies are expected to invest in new talents. A little loss is expected and acceptable.

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achimoraites profile image
Achilles Moraites

I agree that the companies should invest in people!

It's sad how many talents are being lost because they don't get the support they deserve!

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lauragift21 profile image
Gift Egwuenu • Edited

I was working for exposure literally. I took the job because I was eager to learn from experienced engineers. But I worked for free for two months and left couldn’t afford to keep up.

I just summarized my first months...

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maxart2501 profile image
Massimo Artizzu

A pity they didn't even offer you a wage 🙁

If you're actively contributing on any way, you should get paid.

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lukegarrigan profile image
Luke Garrigan

I was excited, couldn't wait for them to see how good I was at programming, how much University had taught me. Oh, how wrong I was 🤣. It took me a good 5 minutes to realise that I know literally nothing.

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Oliver Obenland

I was so proud of myself, because I were so fast with typing the signature of a java main method, when I started Vocational orientation for pupils as software developer. Well, I never wrote it once, nor writing code at all in this time but was cleaning the warehouse and sorting hardware 🤣

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maxart2501 profile image
Massimo Artizzu

Without any motivation to go on, I've left my PhD in mathematics. "Well, I have to find a job now..."

Asked around, after 10 days I thought I was being interviewed for a position in a computer shop. After some puzzling questions about my development background (which was almost non-existent, actually), I discovered it was for a development position.

I got hired. I still couldn't believe I pulled that off.

The first day I had no idea what that job was about. Or what I was expected to do.

Fortunately, they weren't even expecting that, and that helped me a lot kick-starting my career... that I've loved since then!

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Waylon Walker

I can relate with being broke on day one. My first day was after having 1 month off between college and work, which was spent on our roadtrip honeymoon. It was amazing, but due to some car trouble among other things it went way over budget. Getting to that first paycheck was tough.

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Iamsbharti

At first I was excited about my first job , every bit was memorable and it had to be since a lot of efforts was put to reach at that point, and then the veil lifted when i was asked to create a custom logic to generate reports of tasks run in production by quering the db and display the results along with proving users capabilities to filter out. The room temperature was icy but i was sweating ,it took 2 days but i finished it.Happy starting .I was ready for next challenge.